30 June 2018

How To Make Love Like a Pornstar: A Cautionary Tale

You may mistake the title as a sort of a Kama Sutra
or sort of a sex instruction guide but the content of this is actually an
autobiography.

This is the autobiography of Jenna Jameson.

Jenna is a porn star. You may have seen her in one
of your dad’s or brother’s collection of smut videos.

If I can translate this book to a movie, I can say
that this is “Showgirls” meets “Gia Carangi” meets “Coyote Ugly.” If you have
seen all this three movies, you got all of it in one book.

I like people whose life is colorful, whose life
has been dirty, whose life has been shameful, and whose life has not been a
“fairy tale” or “Cinderella” and yet was able to manage to build a reputation.
That for me is inspiring.

Here are some of my “favorite” expressions from
the book:

On page 7, “There comes a moment in every life
when a choice must be made between right and wrong, between good and evil,
between light and darkness. These decisions are made in and instant, BUT WITH
REPERCUSSIONS that last a LIFETIME. My troubles began the day I chose the
DARKNESS…”

On page 13, “Now I know that if you’re dating
somebody TO IMPROVE HIM, you’re not really in a love relationship. You’re just
being a nurse. The simple truth, and the hardest thing most women ever learn,
is that what you see is what you get.”

On page 34, “It’s funny, but as soon as you stop
thinking – or trying to think – all of your best ideas come to you. When you
don’t focus on a problem, your subconscious will solve it for you. And that’s
what happened.”

On page 36, “I represented money leaving their
pockets.”

On page 42, “A strip club has its own CASTE SYSTEM
in the locker room: the amount of private space a girl has, the closer she is
to the bathroom, the more lights she has in her changing area all denote her
rank. The top girls don’t even have to go on stage because they are so busy
giving private dances.”

“Every night, I would go home and think about what
I had done wrong, what I could have done better, what new idea I could try to
drive a guy so crazy that he would run to the cash machine to get more money to
pay me.”

On page 43, “What you can’t fix, you feature.”

On page 46, “I want to keep my two lives separate:
to be a MOUSE during the day and a SHARK at night.”

On page 48, “Strippers can be vicious. The
mentality is that if these guys are going to VICTIMIZE us, we’re going to
totally victimize them right back. It seemed like a fair exchange. And it was
character building: I was finally learning to take control of people instead of
being so passive in social situations.”

On page 49, “They say that MONEY CAN’T BUY
HAPPINESS, but that is an OVERSIMPLIFICATION. It actually depends on how you
earn your money. If you’re juggling high–stress investments or managing scores
of employees or deluged with phone calls or hiding something from the
authorities, LIFE IS NO FUN. But if you can walk into a room, lead to a bunch of
guys, and then leave with thousands of dollars in cash in your pocket and no
obligation to anyone – not even an obligation to show up to work the next day –
LIFE IS GOOD.”

On page 60, “Often people make the mistake of
thinking that when others open up to them, they are looking for advice. But
actually, they’ve heard the same advice hundreds of time and never acted on it.
Logically, they know the advice is right, but emotionally they can’t tear
themselves away from their set patterns. And emotions always overpower
thoughts.”

On page 70, “People often say that the world would
be so much better if it were run by WOMEN. But women have as MANY FAULTS AS
MEN. Their faults are just different. So the truth is that the world would not
be better if it were run by a woman, it would be better if it were run by the
right woman. When men race or fight, they are only striving to prove their
MASCULINITY or protect their sense of pride. But women DO NOT COMPARTMENTALIZE
in the same way. For the worst of our species, any other attractive female is
seen as competition and a threat.”

On page 71, “It’s not real life in here. It’s a
game, one big game of MIND FUCKING. If you’re somewhat in tune with other
people and can pick up on what they are thinking and who they are by talking to
them, then you can win. You may not be a manipulative person deep inside, but
in here YOU MUST MANIPULATE. And you will learn that you can get anything you
want by maneuvering CORRECTLY.”

On page 78, “A relationship with a woman is much
different than with man. There is a much stronger emotional connection between
women; with a man, there is more of a power dynamic at work.”

On page 85, “Life has a funny way of surprising
you. When you least expect something to happen, it does.”

On page 97, “They worked me for seven hours before
letting me go. I swore that NEXT TIME I’d show them so much PINK they’d think
the sun was setting.”

On page 131, “But then I looked at my own life: my
career was on fast track, but my family and personal life were in the shitter.
It seemed like a formula for the same king of tragic end. With such an unstable
foundation, the larger an edifice of fame you build on it, the more unwieldy it
becomes – until it just collapses. There were so many things I still needed to
figure out for myself.”

On page 134, “The strange thing about BULLIES is
that if you take their ABUSE, it never ends. But once you get the balls to
stand up to them, they respect you and move on to a WEAKER TARGET. I never
heard a bitchy word from her again. It was that easy – and that difficult.”

On page 173, “…he needed to NUMB himself because
IT WAS EASIER to self–destruct than to face the truth.”

On page 182, “The DEVIL WAS MY OWN REFLECTION. I
had made my living with my looks, and now they were gone: the beautiful blond
hair, the full smiling face, big bedroom eyes. All the curves that men paid
thousands of dollars just to look at HAD MELTED away to reveal a SKELETON IN
RAGS.”

On page 316, “Whatever you go on to do in life,
these films will be WITH YOU forever. Think about how it will affect your
future relationships. And, God forbid, one day you are going to have to explain
them to your children.”

On page 317, “The only thing I ask is that, if you
do it, make sure you DO IT RIGHT. Don’t ever compromise yourself and don’t let
anyone get the best of you. When you show up for work, know that you are an
asset to them and not the other way around.”

On page 324, “I don’t know exactly why I drew the
line there, but I’ve never doubted that decision once. If you come into this
industry as a woman, you need to have a clearly defined set of guidelines and
boundaries for yourself. That’s how you MAINTAIN YOUR SANITY. And every person
I know has a different standard they hold themselves to.”

On page 325, “The job of PORN STAR is not a
calling – or EVEN AN OPTION – for most women. However, if you make the right
decisions and set the right boundaries for yourself, it can be a great living,
because you’ll make a lot of money while doing very little work. And you’ll get
more experience in front of the camera than any HOLLYWOOD actress. Though
watching porn may seem degrading to some women, the fact is that it’s one of
the few jobs for women where you can get to a certain level, look around, and
FEEL SO POWERFUL, not just in the work environment but as a SEXUAL BEING.”

On page 328, “You will always be thought as a PORN
STAR, even if you become a NUN afterward.”

On page 329, “They think that becoming a porn star
means just fucking and doing drugs, but it’s a job. You punch the clock and you
go to work.”

On page 333, “The great thing about becoming a
porn star is that you don’t need a manager, an agent, or ANYONE TAKING GIANT
PERCENTAGES of the money you’re earning. Never let anyone represent you or sign
away anything to another person. Just be HEADSTRONG, stick to your guns, and
have the ability to say NO, and you can keep it all.”

On page 395, “I want to be judged BY WHO I AM as a
person, not by what happened to me. In fact, all the bad things have only
contributed to my confidence and sense of self, because I survived them and
became a better and stronger person for it.”

“Nearly everyone has some sort of SKELETON OF
THEIR OWN or their family HIDDEN IN THE CLOSET. There are people who have
suffered terrible abuse and grown up to be lawyers and doctors with stable
families. Others suffered some small indignation and turned into violent
sociopaths. Ultimately, what really matters is not just the experiences you
have at a young age, but whether or not you are equipped – by your parents, by
your genetics, by your education – to survive and deal with them.”

On page 402, “Success requires some familiarity
with the fatal flow of NARCISSISM.”

On page 412, “My life is at a fucking peak,” I
thought. “There’s nowhere to go from here but down.”

On page 455, “I didn’t realize that it’s a lot
worse TO BE LONELY in the company of someone you supposedly love THAN IT IS to
be lonely by YOURSELF.”

On page 481, “If mistakes and failures are really
nothing but learning lessons, then I was well on my way to a Ph.D in men.”

On page 488, “I had big boobs to begin with, but
in this industry, a girl has to be larger than life. The problem is that big
implants are a magnet for creeps and a hindrance to most physical activity.
That’s why you’ll never see retired porn stars playing golf.”

On page 491, “To be in this industry, you need to
have strong grounding – because you are questioned by everyone, even yourself,
on a daily basis. And if you fall into the trap and start hating WHO YOU ARE,
then you are going to start taking it out on yourself and everyone around you.”

On page 540, “The only problem was that I WASN’T
COMFORTABLE being COMFORTABLE. It wasn’t a feeling that had been part of my
reality in the past.”

On page 548, “But love is NOT an INTELLECTUAL
DECISION. You can’t look for it or hold on to it or run away from it. It comes
and goes according to its own wild inclination, completely out of our control.
All we can do is recognize it when we feel it, and try to enjoy it while it
lasts – be it for a day or a lifetime. I was trying to fight it because I had
taught myself, like most people, to fear love, because it makes me VULNERABLE.”

On page 551, “In myths about everyone from
Hercules to the Buddha, rewards do not come without a struggle. There are
labors to be undertaken, tests to be passed, hardships to overcome. Happy
endings are the products of tragic beginnings.”

On page 554, “In CHILDHOOD, you think your parents
are perfect; in ADOLESCENCE, you realize that they’re not; and ADULTHOOD, I
realized, means finally accepting them for what they are, flawed human beings
just like ourselves.”

On page 565, “I’ve forgiven, but I haven’t
forgotten. There will always be a permanent scar and, though it hasn’t yet
healed FULLY, at least it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

On page 571, “All the wrong choices I had made
served only to ferry me to the right place.”

On page 577 (Epilogue), “I feel like I’ve allowed
myself to let go of the pain, and embrace the fact that I’m not perfect. I
certainly still strive to be the best at whatever I do, but I’m not shattered
IF I FAIL. This has come from my own inner strength, not from looking to other
people to fulfill me. I was always searching for someone to make it better, not
realizing that someone was ME. I’m comfortable just where I am. And this time
I’m not going to run away because I have a future that I never thought was
possible for me to look forward to.”